An Open Letter to Whoever Stole My OB Bike Last Week

Hi, Buddy!

You must be feeling awful clever right about now, having made off with my shiny, precious toy. I’m sure it took not only daring but a remarkable measure of stealth to find your way into my apartment building’s garage, defeating not only the locked access doors but also the 24/7 surveillance cams with what I imagine must have been a sizeable set of bolt cutters to cleave through my lock so efficiently. Kudos!

Also, thanks for not scratching my wife’s car while you conducted your theft – the foresight and careful touch with which you extracted my ride is much appreciated, since I’m sure damage to her bumper would’ve been much costlier than the spoils of your hard work was worth to me, in terms of dollars and cents anyway.

But that’s not entirely what my bike was worth. You see, even though it may have looked shiny and new, what you’ve actually absconded with is a 2015 model Diamondback Trace ST, with a grey frame and green accents. I got it off a discount site, two years past its prime and at about half the retail value. So the cash equivalent that you’ve taken from me isn’t too rough – maybe a week’s wages after considering all of the doo-dads I’ve applied to it to make it specifically mine.

Mine. This was *my* bike. That’s what hurts me the most, the thing that haunted me for hours after heading down to the garage with my daughter, who was excited to go for a ride with her dad that would end up with a sushi lunch (cycling and sushi are the two most prominent special daddy/daughter things we share that Mom has little tolerance for).

Just two weeks ago I’d gotten a new stem to adjust the rise and reach of my handlebars to fit my body perfectly – even though I’m 5’11” you’ve surely noticed that the 17.5″ medium frame seemed out of place with the tall seat height and comically-adjusted handlebars – I have a big torso and comparatively short arms and legs, so the stand-over height of a more-appropriate large frame would’ve been inconvenient.

At the same time, I’d installed some new pedals, which I’ll assume you’re currently puzzling over; the hooped bits are to lock in the cleats in my not-even-broken-in cycling shoes, a badass set that resemble casual kicks at first glance and are almost as cool as the Answer Softies I rocked back in my racing days, complete with the “anarchy A” logo on the side. With those few simple changes, the addition of a saddle bag with spare tube, allen wrench set, and some note paper for taking an interview on the fly, that bike was *mine*.

Oh yeah, the saddle. That was the first split-back seat ever released, I remember the Specialized rep coming into the shop where I worked when I was 15 (we didn’t even sell complete Specialized bikes, so this visit was rare!) pimping this seat as the beginning of a revolution – two decades later and I’ve never loved a seat so much, so your taking that from my fat chapped ass burns as much as the rest of your transgressions.

But that bike is yours now, and soon it’ll belong to whatever flunkie you can find to give you a few bucks for booze, meth, pot, or whatever (I’m betting it’s meth, tweekers are the lowest of the low).

I’m guessing you have little in the way of conscience, dear thief, and I hope that serves you well. But while you’ve certainly won this round, I’m not going down.

You see, I discovered your handiwork late Sunday morning. I’d promised my daughter that if she got her share of the housecleaning done, I’d take her for a ride and a sushi lunch – I think I’ve mentioned her mom’s tastes ensure we don’t get to enjoy these things on the regular. Obviously, having my bike stolen put a bit of a cramp on our plans. Thanks for not stealing her bike or her mom’s, though – I’m not sure if this was your kind heart realizing that it would present a much more serious burden to a non-driving kid to take away her only means of transportation or if you just figured you’d only be able to ride away on one bike at a time. Regardless, thanks for only fucking over me rather than my whole family.

At this point, I don’t mean to rain on your parade (lying – I completely do), but you didn’t crush us.

Sure, you made my daughter cry when she realized we wouldn’t be going for our ride. My wife even shed a tear on my behalf when I told her how you’d conspired to ruin our weekend. I’ve got to admit that I even sulked for a few hours, thinking about how some humans behave in a manner that would embarrass even a cockroach.

But at the end of the day, you lose. Well, until my security cam footage finds you and likely ties you to other burglaries like this one – no, then you still lose.

My daughter and I still made our lunch date, and we spent the afternoon together having fun in spite of you. I headed down to the bike shop a few days later, where I picked up another cheap clearance stand-in and a new lock, and my family still made it down to the beach on the Fourth to take in the fireworks that we’ve been watching since we came to town 10 years ago.

You’ll find out soon enough that my bike wasn’t really worth all that much. By that time, I’ll have processed my grief and moved on. I can only wish you the best – that the high you’ll be able to obtain from your dirty money is most satisfying, or the kind that renders you hospitalized in a coma where you’ll at least temporarily be unable to ravage others as you did me.

Love and kisses!

Dave